Portrait of a Teenage Assassin
by Kyd Chyme
Summary: After Red glove. Cassel Sharpe has a lot to atone for, but he'll never get his chance. He's finally become what he was meant to be. Really, with his curse, it was only a matter of time before someone boxed him in to a life like this... One-Shots!
1. Portrait of a Teenage Assassin

**Disclaimer: I own nothing. It all belongs to the wonderful Holly Black…**

Portrait of a Teenage Assassin

The deja'vu that washes over me is lacking, creeping over me like the lost memories Barron has blackened over in my mind. Sometimes on the tip of my thoughts, others just an empty hole of black. I shiver.

Gray walls and gray floors and halls and faces and lives. Everything blends together. Same and different. New and old.

There are some differences. Last time I had home work to finish, a house to clean, and a woman to frame for murder. I feel like it's not so dramatic this time. More scripts though. Lies and half-truths slipping past my lips in a single play. I remember what Lila labeled me on the train, months and months ago. "Portrait of a teenage assassin". It was fitting then. It still fits me now. I scrawl it at the top of my written report. Nothing they don't already know.

The door opens with a soft click. Half-noises for half-truths. I hate those kind of things. I'm always waiting for part two, and it never delivers.

The Agents are smeared together. Joneshunt. They look at me like I'm an animal. Don't get too close. Dangerous. No feeding allowed.

I give them the my written report and they hand me the new job. "A Mission" they call them.

Michelle Bubletts," They say, "thirty three."

Nothing about what she did. Or saw. It doesn't matter here. She might as well hold the value of a lamp. As far as she knows, maybe she already is one, wrapped up in human flesh and waiting for my finger tips to release it's true metallic form.

They tell me I need to meet with her. Get her to cooperate. They are blunt when they ask me to kill. Skirting around and nondescripts are new. I don't like it. I don't like any of it.

"You want meto _talk_ to her?" I ask.

Agent Huntjones raises his right eye brow a bit and gives me a look that tells me how stupid I am. Agent Joneshunt tries to mimic the gesture but ends up with a double raises look that resembles surprise. Another time and I would have cracked a smart-assed smile at his failure. Another life and I would have meant it.

One thing they both manage is to make eye contact. Not many people ever do. But the Agents look me in the eye in a way Philip never could. My brother was ashamed of what he had turned me in to. The Agents aren't.

"Oh." I say, "You want me to scare her." Not a question this time. Maybe it never really was. I sigh and think about what Sam told me that night we found out Daneca was a worker. He told me he knew I was dangerous. That I had failed to con my way to normalcy.

I look past the feds and at the reflection-me in the dark reflective window. I look older than I am, but still young. Too young –I think, too young to fool my kind. But to others… I take in the overgrown hair –so long now I could probably tie it back in a rubber band in a month or two –and the dark eyes my mother gave to all her children. I look a lot like Philip, enough to make me feel a little sick.

Mirror me stares.

"Tomorrow morning." They say, "Eleven thirty."

Don't they know that monsters and crooks like to come out in the dark?

"I'll need until tomorrow night." I say, "Six thirty."

The Agents look no more or less tense. I am the bad guy, not them. They let me do my work.

I spend the car ride back to the school listening to screechy rap and planning on a way to ask Sam to bash my face in. He won't want to. I need to make him. A year ago and I would have asked. _Not anymore, _I tell myself. _Tell him to._

He is afraid of me. He knows something has changed with the feds. A "deal" I called it. I thought I could con him. Make him think I was playing snitch. He's wasn't fooled. He knows what I am. I let him get to close.

Killer.

Murderer.

I wonder long much longer before they tell me to go after Lila.

It was only two months after the new arrangement that I killed Barron. We were just passing information then. Barron was spinning his lies. Too fast and complex to keep ordered. He didn't bother with the notebooks by then. We both knew what I would do to them.

The Agents manipulated him good. _Make him forget. _They'd tell Barron. _The man on the street. Green shirt; blond hair. The woman with the blue gloves. Make her think he recognizes us. _

And then he was nothing.

No name or memory or self. He had lost what made him Barron.

I turned him into the marble he threw at my head when I was nine. Lila had just left for the fall. It was the last time I would see her until I was thirteen. It was also the first time I had beaten him at the game.

_You cheated!_

But I know it's only cheating if you get caught.

The Agents didn't say anything about what I did. The next day they just gave me a new Mission and sent me off. I must be worth a Hell of a lot to them. More than Barron ever was, anyway.

"You hit my nose," I say, "and I'll return the favor."

Sam gulps but still draws back his fist when I tell him I'm ready.

I scare him into throwing the blow. I scare him into not missing the side of my face.

I try to relax my jaw and end up biting my tongue for the trouble. I spit out blood.

"I'm not coming back." I tell him.

"Okay." He says.

This part of my life is over. There is no longer a point in pretending to play the house cat. Besides, if Sam figures out too much, he'll just end up being another name on the Mission List.

The bruise is nice. Not the kind that swells up a face and make it look like you lost a round. It's shadowy and vague. Just like the visage.

I don't shave in the morning. Mom once told us stubble gave people the impression of a rogue. An _older_ rogue. More mature.

I am going for fear.

I grease my hair back.

I am not a nice guy.

I am trying to be like Philip. It's not hard.

The Agents give me a house number, all typed up on a thin square of yellowed paper; tell me to get the job done. I nod. Conman. Killer. Worker. Bully. I am good at what I do. They have no reason to worry.

Still, they I know they'll be right behind me, ready to seal the deal the moment I have the target begging me not to kill her. It's always the same routine.

I don't recheck the slip of paper when I arrive, don't look for the nondescript black SUV trailing me. Just get of the car, no gun tucked into my belt, no knife shoved into my boot, just loose gloves against my bare wrists and I am heavily armed.

I see her peeking through the white window blinds. Half my job is already done. She knows they have come for her. She is afraid.

I knock on the door, very polite, very soft. She, wisely, doesn't open for me. I kick it open.

"Michelle…" I call. The Agents told me to always use first names. It makes the target feel like I already have them. Like I know them personally enough that they'll never really get away. It's unsettling.

She's in the master bedroom, standing with her legs spread and an old slow-pitch slugger cocked back behind her shoulder. Her brown hair is short and scraggly around her face. Greasy and unhealthy skin peers between the tangles. She doesn't look like she's slept in a while. Or showered.

"Don't bother." I pull off my gloves slowly, "You don't want to make this worse."

She swallows and looks at dark space between bed and floor.

"I'll find the kid." I say. And I know I'm right about her secret even before she drops the bat in defeat.

"Please." She says. But please doesn't really mean anything. It's just useless word people sometimes say when they're looking for a way out. _Please Lila, I'm sorry_. Atton used that word once too. And he was dead now.

Enter the Agents.

Agent Joneshunt, is leading the strolling charge, Agent Huntjones right behind him. A force of black suits and ridiculously overused shades. They are saviors to Michelle Bubletts. Angels to take away the demon that has cornered her.

"What do you want?" She asks. She already seems to know why, which means she probably knows exactly what they want too. I don't like playing games like this anymore. The Agents never liked them at all.

"You need to come with us, Ms. Bubletts." Agent Joneshunt says.

"My son…"

"Can come to. He'll be safe, you have my word."

She eyes me underneath the messy hair shading her face. I shift my weight forwards. She nods. "Okay."

And my job is done.

She tells the boy to come out from under the bed, clutches him close when I watch them. Now that two federal agents are witness to everything, she feels okay to glare at me with a changed, abet familiar, expression. There is a lot of fear there. And mistrust. But I can still see the same look of low disgust the Agents give me on her thin features.

Her son looks like he's going to start crying.

I give him the coldest smile I muster. Blank-eyed and crooked. Just like my brothers use to. Just like I always have. He buries his face in her loose shirt and doesn't look back.

Smart kid.

**Well, I tried to get a sort of Holly Black (a la Curse Workers) writing style in there. Anyway, the series is great. No, I definitely don't think this will happen in the events of Black Heart (third Curse Workers book coming out in March-ish). **

**I'd love some feedback. I mean, I know not a lot of people frequent the Curse Workers category, but those of us who do should stick together in an impenetrable field of Holly Black book lovers, right? Who's with me?**

**-KydChyme **


	2. Bad Guys

**Disclaimer: I own nothing. **

**Bad Guys**

_Back to the scene of the crime._ Only not really, unless I count lying to Federal Agents about murder and curses, which on principle, I don't.

Also, last time I visited I was on the opposite side of the tinted window. I like this side better. _I can see you, but you can't see me._

Survive on the fringe; survive in the shadows.

There's no one in the interrogation room to watch. My reflection stands out like a real mirror against the tinted panes.

_"You have to accept the past, Cassel. Accept it and move on to a brighter future."_

No one in my family ever liked psychiatrists. _Nosy_, my dad would have said to my fourteen year old self, or maybe something more colorful to bring the point across now.

Dr. Thorne makes it all fun though. It's another con to run. _Another state of mind._ I wonder if I can trick myself to normalcy.

I try. I don't even pretend she'd an evil comic book character when we walk. Much.

It's warm enough inside for my breath not to show up against the tinted windows leading into the empty interrogation room. Dr. Thorne walks up behind me. I don't move.

"Cassel." She says. But it's not really a greeting or a pleading _talk to me_ tone, so I give her a slow blink. I am acting like a ten year old trouble maker.

We stare at our reflection-selves.

"You know," She says, "they say the eyes are the windows to the soul."

I could end this conversation right now, _My eyes are black,_ and be done with it. I should. I don't.

"Philips eyes were always cold." I say instead, "Barron's are always calculating. _What next? And how?" _Reflection-me locks eyes with the reflection doctor. I try to smile. "Do my eyes tell you about the inner depths of my soul?"

"I like you, Cassel," She says suddenly, "and I think you're hurting."

My smile widens. "I'm a killer." I say. It doesn't feel good or bad to say it. It's just the way things are. _I am a killer. I want to turn my brother into an inanimate object. I am in love with a ruthless future crime lord. _"I hurt people."

Dr. Thorne looks a little uncomfortable and I realize normal probably wouldn't be smiling when they say things like that.

"You don't want that." She tells me. Very cautious and with one eye on my hands, the other on the door behind us.

"No." I say, "I guess I don't."

_But you don't know that._

**Short and snippy one-shot for the soul. I'll probably add more whenever the mood suits me. As one might expect, more feed-back equals more motivation… Also, getting some suggestions for new one-shots would be really cool.**

**-KydChyme**


End file.
